Disappointed, Orioles Still Have a Game to Play

For more than a month, the Baltimore Orioles put a scare into the Yankees. They succeeded in filling the end of the regular season with tension, making it seem as if the playoffs had already started.

In the end, though, the Orioles never did overtake the Yankees for first place in the American League East — not for a single day. They pulled even for 10 days, sprinkled all through September, and came here that way on Sunday night. They left here on Wednesday two games back, after dropping two of three to the Tampa Bay Rays, who got three homers from Evan Longoria in a 4-1 victory in the regular-season finale.

The Orioles now head to Texas for the wild-card game against the Rangers on Friday. Had they beaten the Rays on Wednesday, the game would have taken place at Camden Yards.

“There’s a little bit of disappointment,” said right fielder Chris Davis, a former Ranger whose streak of six games with a homer ended on Wednesday. “But at the same time, you can’t hang your head. You have to be proud of what you accomplished this season, and you’ve got to be ready to go to Texas and play nine innings.”

The Orioles knew they would face a much tougher opponent than they had last weekend, when they swept the free-falling Red Sox at home. The Rays finished the season with 90 victories and the best earned run average in the majors, 3.19, holding Baltimore to 5 runs and 11 hits in the series.

The Red Sox, meanwhile, capped their worst season in decades with three losses in a row in the Bronx, two by wide margins. The Yankees had the clear edge this week, and they used it.

Photo

The Orioles’ Chris Tillman, left, gave up two of the three homers hit by the Rays’ Evan Longoria.Credit
Steve Nesius/Reuters

“We knew that game in New York tonight was a real long shot,” Orioles Manager Buck Showalter said. “There was some advantage to being able to win, regardless, but they’re looking forward to the opportunity. It’s a tough road, however you do it. We feel real good about the opportunity we have earned.”

The Orioles will face Yu Darvish, the Rangers’ All-Star right-hander, on Friday, but they have not named their own starter. Showalter said it could be the veteran left-hander Joe Saunders, who is 3-3 with a 3.67 E.R.A. in seven starts since a trade from Arizona, or the rookie Steve Johnson, who is 4-0 with a 2.11 earned run average in 12 games (four starts) this season.

Baltimore and Texas have identical records (93-69), but the Rangers will host on Friday because they won the teams’ season series. In that way, said the Orioles’ Adam Jones, the new playoff format is no different than the old one, at least in the American League. Had they finished with identical records last season, the teams would have still had to play a tiebreaker game for the right to advance to the division series.

“Who matches up well with Texas?” Jones said. “They’re a major league team; they can be beat. They’re not easy to beat, but we can beat them. You’ve got to put up runs. They will put up runs in a hurry, and our team has to do that. We’ve got to get these bats going.”

The Orioles desperately want a game at Camden Yards, which last hosted a postseason game in the 1997 American League Championship Series, when Jim Thome’s Cleveland Indians won the pennant.

“It was very hectic,” said Thome, now the Orioles’ designated hitter. “From a visiting player’s end, it was chaos. It was very electric, very similar to Cleveland when we first started going.

“The excitement, the atmosphere, the adrenaline, everything was great. It’s a great baseball city, and it’s so great to see it now re-form itself again and come back. What has it been, 15 years? It’s been 15 years of, let’s face it, not so much fun. And I guess to have watched it back then, and then to see it go back to that, you root for cities like that.”

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Jim Thome, who is seventh on the career home run list, still has a chance to add a World Series title to his impressive résumé.Credit
Michael Dwyer/Associated Press

Thome, 42, has done more than root for the Orioles this year. He has played a small part in helping them return to the playoffs, hitting .260 with three home runs in 28 games since a midseason trade from Philadelphia. Thome batted sixth here on Wednesday, going 0 for 3.

The Orioles will be the fifth team Thome has played for in the postseason, after the Indians, the Chicago White Sox, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Minnesota Twins. He has never won a championship, and his pursuit of one led him last winter to the Phillies, his team from 2003 through 2005.

“I signed with Philly to go back there, because I had history and I knew Charlie Manuel and I knew the organization, and let’s face it, they won 102 games,” Thome said. “That was a team that you looked at and said, ‘Man, they have a great opportunity.’ Then I get traded and you come over here and you go, ‘Wow.’ ”

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It has not been easy. It rarely is, for players his age. Thome has made history this season, setting the career record for game-ending homers, with 13, and climbing into seventh on the career home run list, with 612. But he missed eight weeks with a herniated disk in his neck before returning Sept. 22.

Like Andy Pettitte with the Yankees, Thome did not choose to keep playing so he could spend his summer in the Florida humidity, recovering from an injury. But he has made it back in time for another chance at October, with his trademark enthusiasm intact.

“Jim’s on every day, and it’s not anything phony,” Showalter said.“He’s on, and he’s fun to be around. His glass is always half-full.”

Showalter used that phrase again to describe his own attitude after losing on Wednesday. The Orioles cost themselves a chance to play at home, but the delay might be only temporary.

“We still have that opportunity,” Showalter said. “If we play well on Friday and win a game, that’s in our hands.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 4, 2012, on Page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: Disappointed, Orioles Still Have A Game to Play. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe